Current reading: Nothing—requesting recommendations for good historical fiction…aside from Philippa Gregory

Sunny.

So our glorious, fearless leader at The Figment Writers gave us this single word prompt this week and for most of the week I busted my brain to try and figure out some kind of inspiration for the word. This prompt also came up in the middle of me being neck deep in Light’s Guide revisions. So I tabled the word and focused on the daunting task in front of me. Something would come to me later, I knew.

The task was daunting because as of last Wednesday I still had 5 chapters to edit and my goal was to finish before I returned to the full time desk job after the holiday. So that word was tabled and I lost myself in the visual/structural aspects of Christi’s story. And, dear readers, YES, this is Christi’s book.

So the days go by and I forget all about it because I’m so absorbed in this process and for my fellow writers, you all know how rough the revision process is. The “Does this make sense” comes up often because, as a creator, I write in the heat of the moment and pull it into some semblance of order after the story gives me what it wants to say. Suffice to say, that the revision process is more tedious because of my creative process. In the same vein, I don’t think I’d trade this process for the world because—to me, at least—that heat and emotional rawness translates the way I want it to. The few readers I have connect with my characters and that, at the end of the day, is my ultimate goal.

So Monday night I’m wrapping up the Epilogue and it hits me; this writing prompt I had tabled came back and smacked me square in the nose! Sunny can mean a number of things to different people. It can be a disposition, weather, a description of someone…so many possibilities. To me, with this book’s end, the sun came out for the realm I’ve created. I completed another story and that’s pretty damn sunny to me. For Christi, the sun comes out. For me, I get to put her story to bed with a sunny sense of accomplishment. Now…to enjoy this June sunshine and savor this accomplishment before I start layout and cover design.